Navigating the US National Broadband Map

The US government's long-awaited National Broadband Map has arrived, with tons …

It's here. Commissioned by the Obama Administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (remember that?), the Department of Commerce rolled out its National Broadband Map right on deadline.

The DoC announcement comes with the requisite bad news and we've-got-to-do-better commentary. The map indicates that up to 10 percent of Americans still don't have access to broadband speeds that support basic broadband uses like video and video conferencing, notes the DoC's National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

"There are still too many people and community institutions lacking the level of broadband service needed to fully participate in the Internet economy," intoned NTIA Chief Lawrence Strickling, following the map's release.

But the good news is that the National Broadband Map is very accessible and lots of fun. Here's how to use it.

The street where you live

First, just go to the main page and type in an address. I plugged in one of my favorite locations around my neck of the Ars Orbiting HQ: the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library: 100 Larkin Street, 94102.

Almost instantly, I got a breakdown of all available broadband services around the building: wired and wireless. The top landline provider is Comcast, which according to the results offers downloads between 100Mbps-1Gbps using Cable DOCSIS 3.0 and uploads between 10-25Mbps via the same venue.

Next comes AT&T, offering 1.5-3.0Mbps DSL, followed by Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) offering the same via wireless broadband, followed by Sprint Nextel and Verizon providing 768Kbps-1.5Mbps.

What can you do with this data? Well, one thing you might want to try is contacting these carriers to find out whether the map is accurate. The AT&T metric looks to be on the mark. Our quick perusal of Comcast's online advertised San Francisco offerings suggests that the top residential download is around 50Mbps. But a Comcast phone representative told us that the ISP does offer 1Gbps plans in that area (warning: they're a bit more expensive than the 10Mbps plan).

If you find that one of the carriers listed doesn't actually provide service in the neighborhood you searched, you can tell the map that it's wrong. Or you can alert the map to an unmentioned ISP. But if you're okay with the data, the application lets you share it on Facebook, Tweet it, or create a tinyurl link to the page.

This is the most practical thing you can do with the National Broadband Map—and it's definitely a service, in that it allows you to discover what kind of broadband plans are available in your area. But the site offers more ambitious researchers additional tools.

Big picture

Go over to the broadband technology section of the app and you can map out available ISP technologies by geographic area. For example, you can create a chart of all Fiber-to-the-End-user networks across the United States, and then drill down into specific places to see where Fiber-to-the-Home is available in your region.

The process is a little bit unwieldy, but it works. One thing you learn pretty fast is that the Midwest is where the fiber is (hello Wichita and Indianapolis!). You can also map out your area via the various DSL flavors, DOCSIS cable, and fixed or mobile wireless.

Rank me

For broadband watchers who want to shame their politicians into encouraging more ISP deployment in their area, the map has excellent ranking capabilities. I asked for San Francisco's ranking among counties offering download speeds greater than 6Mbps and it tiered my city at number 96 among 3,225 counties. Last on the list was Loving, Texas, which offers zero services at that speed.

And the map also offers community snapshots of broadband services in any area. Take, for example, Hennepin County, home to the city of Mound, Minnesota, home of the $249.99 DSL broadband plan (yes, it's strange; read the story). The map lets you get a breakdown of what percentage of the county has access to broadband, broken down by different technologies, companies, and institutions like libraries and schools.

The National Broadband Map is a great start, as far as we're concerned. It would be more helpful if its crowdsourcing capabilities allowed users to correct carrier speed claims. The NTIA promises that the site's databases will be updated every six months.

Matthew Lasar / Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.